Before you settle in to read this post, check if you have a dollar in your pocket. That's where dollar bills hang out because, by themselves, they can't do much. You can't get a cup of coffee for a dollar in most places; you certainly can't buy lunch or a bed or a bathroom.

Or can you?

Lisa Finneran and her husband Mike are just back from visiting 12 Russian orphanages and they think $1 can go a long way. Especially if they get one million of them.

If you think those names sound familiar, you're right. I wrote about the Finneran's philanthropic vehicle, ArkAngels for Russian Orphans, in March on the eve of their trip to Russia. But their recent trip, during which the couple saw where nearly 1,200 Russian orphans live, has inspired them to take their efforts to the next level, by raising $1 million, one dollar at a time.

"There were faces there that will stick with me forever," says Lisa, a journalist and mother to twins adopted from Russia in 2003 and a bio surprise baby. "I wanted to do something to make their lives better." And to the Finnerans, improving orphanage facilities is the best way. One hundred dollars will buy two beds for an orphanage; $1,000 will buy a washer and dryer.

Lisa Finneran says she learned to distinguish an orphanage's quality by its smell. "If you smelled cabbage, it was an average orphanage. If you smelled blini, it was a wonderful place. If you smelled human waste, it was pretty bad." For that orphanage, the Finnerans want to replace the open-pit latrines with real bathrooms.

Thanks to the power of the Internet, the Finnerans have been able to revamp the ArkAngels Web site to collect donations as small as one dollar. The funds are collected by PayPal (you don’t have to be a PayPal member to use it) and will be routed to Children's Hope Chest, a Colorado-based outreach organization that has NGO status in Russia.

As ArkAngel collects its dollars (you can watch the countdown on Lisa's blog), Lisa can't shake the memory of one little girl she met. "Olga ran after me in the snow and just started sobbing," Lisa says. "I had to take her arms and put them away from me and tell her everything would be OK and walk away."

So that dollar that's burning a hole in your pocket: Do you know what to do with it now?